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Vacation season is upon us, and in my experience, the prospect of boarding a plane is a great motivator to review my estate plan. Although (in 31 years of practice) I have not lost a vacationing client, I understand the anxiety that vacation travel can provoke. If you are planning a vacation this summer and […]

A fiduciary is a person who stands in a position of trust to one or more other people typically with respect to the safeguarding or management of assets. For example, the person you name to carry out your wishes in your Will (Personal Representative) or under your Trust (Trustee) is a fiduciary. This is important […]

Upon receipt from the Court of the Letters of Authority appointing a person as Personal Representative (PR) of the decedent’s estate in an informal or formal probate, the PR has the authority to begin taking action with regard to the assets of the estate. These “probate assets” (owned in the decedent’s individual name which do […]

News from Samuel, Sayward & Baler LLC for April 2018 includes the articles: Ask SSB, Five Questions to Ask Yourself when Choosing a Trustee, What You Need to Know About Medicare, Lessons Learned from an Injury, and What’s New at Samuel, Sayward & Baler LLC.

In late December, I slipped on some ice and broke my right ankle. I had surgery on the ankle in mid-January, and I am still in the process of recovering and working toward “getting back to normal.” As they say, “hindsight is 20/20”, and I have thought about what may have made the entire experience […]

Q: My mom passed away a few months ago. She had a will that leaves everything to me and my sister equally. That means we don’t have to go through probate, right? A: I wish I could get a hold of the person who started this tale: “If you have a will, you do not […]

As we often tell our clients, although you would like your estate plan to last forever, it probably won’t. Things change, laws change, family circumstances change, and your estate plan needs to change with it if you want it to continue to accomplish your planning goals. For most people these goals include making sure the […]

The snows and no-snows of March set me to thinking about disruption. When I was a kid, waking up to a foot of snow was one of the most joyful events of my life – especially if it happened on school day. As an adult, I have the opposite reaction. In fact when I looked […]

Clients often tell me that they want to transfer their house to their children or add a child’s name to their deed because they want to protect the property from a forced spend down or a Medicaid lien in the event they need long-term care. However this is not an action that should be taken […]